The open area of a door hinge frequently attracts the eyes and exploring fingers of small children and accounts for 55% of door related injuries. If the door closes while fingers are within this area, as much as 40 tons of pressure per square inch is created easily crushing or pulverizing human tissue, and amputating fingers.
It has been reported that according to the National Safety Council—Injury Facts 2011 Edition; U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission's National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, that approximately 380,800 door related injuries occur in the United States every year. Door related injuries occur at a rate of 31,000 month, 1,000 every day, 42 every hour and 1 every 1.4 minutes. According to one study; Clinical Pediatric Study: “Children Treated in the United States Emergency Departments for Door-related Injuries, 1999-2008”, approximately eighty percent of door-related injuries occur to children in the home and approximately forty two percent of these children were under the age of four. Thousands of children every year are sent to the hospital with fractures, crushed and pulverized tissue or broken bones because portions of fingers and hands were caught in slamming doors.
Door injuries are very serious, disastrous, and potentially life changing. Amputations are a triple threat involving loss of function, loss of sensation, and loss of body image causing postoperative complications such as psychological problems, phantom pain, adverse emotional health, and needed psychosocial support. Individuals who earn their living from motor skills are especially vulnerable to amputations. Amputation in the preadolescent or adolescent age group is a great threat to emerging self image and sexual identity, and elderly amputees are at a greater risk for psychiatric disturbances such as depression, social isolation, new financial stringencies, and occupational limitations which complicate the adjustment to serious door hand injuries or finger amputations.
The true incidence of door-related injuries is underestimated because not all door related injuries are treated in hospital emergency departments and urgent care centers do not report statistics. Of the reported cases, tens of thousands of door related injuries result in finger amputations to children. Even one door injury is too many. Embodiments of the present invention can prevent most if not all of these types of injuries.
The present invention will not only prevent injury to children by unintended door closings, but will mitigate real potential legal and financial liability to many public and private facilities. There are many potential legal theories under which these public and private facilities having known and foreseeably unsafe doors can be found legally liable for these injuries including: premises liability, landowner-occupier duties, general negligence, attractive nuisance doctrine, products liability, and strict liability under codified health care safety codes as well as strict liability under building codes. For example, under the attractive nuisance doctrine, where the trespass of a child is likely, a landowner owes a duty to exercise ordinary care to avoid a foreseeable risk of harm posed by known dangerous artificial conditions, which result from the child's inability to appreciate the risk of harm. Many heavy commercial doors readily attract children. Some of these doors and door surrounds have attractive shiny metallic finishes or bright colored paint baiting the eyes and exploring fingers of children. Doors are easily accessible to the exploring fingers of young children who are unable to appreciate the dangerous condition of the unsafe doors which are potentially finger amputating instruments.
Liability under the attractive nuisance doctrine can be imposed as there now exists the inventor's known door hinge safety device which can be both be easily installed and installed at a small cost compared to the overall door installation. Thus, the cost of eliminating the known dangerous artificial condition of the finger amputating door is not so burdensome compared to the overall installation of the door and this duty of care to install hand and finger protecting devices should be afforded even with respect to child trespassers.
Landowner or occupier liabilities can attach even more easily than under the attractive nuisance doctrine since both landowner and occupier liability extends to licensees and/or invitees when they are injured in the face of known and foreseeable risks posed to them.
The Health and Safety Act from England is a piece of legislation enacted by the so UK legislature codifying health and safety regulations in the work place. It essentially spells out and mandates the “duty of care” employers have over the health, safety, and welfare of their staff in the workplace. Codified law imposes strict liability which eliminates the generally required “mens rea” or mental/intentional/intent element of a crime, ordinances, code, or statute.
Summarizing the codified law of the Health and Safety Act, the law asserts that an employer is required to manage the health and safety of the work place as to prevent accidents and ill-health. In complying with the law the employers/landowners are required to identify and avoid physical hazards, carry out risk assessments, and even prepare written safety statements. These physical hazards of the codified Health and Safety Act would extend to having a duty of care to prevent finger-trapping accidents in doors and gates. Risks posed by all doors and gates must be assessed and reasonable precautions taken to ensure that the doors can be safely used. Since hand and finger guarding devices are readily available, easy and inexpensive to install, not doing so has been found to be a breach of the duty of care imposed by the Health and Safety Act of the UK and similar codified law that is likely to become more and more prevalent throughout the United States.
A nursery in the suburb of Norwich in the English county of Norfolk was fined £75,000 for the nursery's breach of its imposed “duty of care” under the Health and Safety Act for the nursery's omission in not installing door finger guards. The injury sustained in that nursery in which a 14-month old had his finger amputated from a door closing was of the same type of injury that the Health and Safety Code was designed to prevent and thus liability was found.
Throughout the United States there is an abundance of well settled case law upholding strict liability for crimes in which apartment owners, landlords, and occupiers has violated health, building, public safety, and fire prevention code, ordinances, statutes, and regulations.
In the case of People v. Bachrach (1980) 114 Cal. 3d Supp. 8, 170 Cal. Rptr. 773 the owner of an apartment building who was being prosecuted for violation of a number of provisions in an ordinance relating to public safety and fire prevention, the court no rejected the defendant's proposed jury instruction which provided that “there must be a joint operation of act or conduct and criminal intent.” The court found that the crimes which the apartment owner was charged with did not require proof of guilty knowledge or intent. It held that the doctrine of strict liability applied and therefore neither intent nor criminal negligence was an essential element of the crimes charged.
The Court in the case of the People v. Balmer (1961) 196 Cal. App. 2d Supp. 874 dealt with statutes and offenses of a regulatory nature that were found to be enforceable irrespective of criminal intent or criminal negligence. In this case the defendants were being convicted for owning and operating a nursing and convalescent home without keeping it in good repair and in a neat and sanitary condition at all times. The court held that neither guilty knowledge nor intent had to be shown and that the mere omission to fulfill the required standard constituted the crime charged.
As more codified law, codes, statutes, and regulations are promulgated throughout the various states, cities and municipalities within the United States, we will see more criminal liability imposed, fines, and penalties for breaches in violations of failure to take precautions to ensure door safety.
Thus, the benefits of the invention surpass the mitigation of hand and finger injuries by extending to mitigate real financial and legal liabilities.